The Last Train
The Imperial Capital. The Kodana Exchange.
Bingo, a short, stout man with an unassuming, round face, stepped through the grand entrance of the trading floor. By attire alone, he looked nothing like someone who belonged in such a place. The vast majority of Kodana investors were highborn nobles, after all.
Indeed, the moment Bingo crossed the threshold, hushed murmurs rippled through the hall. Yet none questioned why a shabbily dressed commoner had dared set foot inside.
"Look at that stubby fellow... What was his name again? Isn't he the agent who's been scouting real estate for Eric?"
"Not just an agent—he's an investor himself. I hear he's holding about nine of them."
"Nine? Ha! The balls on that bastard. Where the hell did he even get the coin? Put his very life up as collateral for a loan?"
"Probably bought in early."
Bingo felt a fresh shiver of awe at the sheer reach of the Kodana crowd's intelligence network. Eric is one thing, but they recognize even someone like me on sight?
Within the Imperial Capital, Eric had long been a known figure. Among the rank-and-file of the Imperial Guard, his swordsmanship ranked in the top three, and he had nearly joined the Hero's party. Above all, he was one of the legendary whales who had held a staggering hundred and eight Kodana coins.
Bingo, on the other hand, was merely a commoner without a single noble patron to lean on. While not every commoner lived in squalor, Bingo was truly the son of bottom-feeding day laborers scraping by on low wages. He had never received much affection from his impoverished parents, either. One needed only to look at the frivolous name they had slapped on their precious son—Bingo—to understand that much.
Raised by parents who barely bothered to feed him, he had taught himself to read, earned his own tuition to attend a civic school, and passed a modest examination to land a job as a low-level clerk in the Imperial Guard administration. From running errands to fetch the vice commander's sweets to managing mundane food provisions, there was nothing he hadn't done.
Kodana had been the very first stroke of fortune in his entire life.
And quite possibly the last.
Bingo cast a lingering, reluctant gaze at the nine Kodana coins nestled in his palm. After paying off the initial loan he had taken out to buy them and shaving off the exchange fees, roughly 3.3 billion lira would land directly in his pocket.
I really wanted to sell them at a slightly better price...
Yet he could delay no longer. Eric, who had liquidated his own stash ahead of him, had given an urgent, unyielding warning. In truth, Eric hadn't disclosed the exact reason why he had to sell immediately; he had only mentioned running into the Hero at the Imperial Palace. But to Bingo, that alone spoke volumes.
It wasn't that he blindly swallowed every word Eric said, but the mere fact that the Hero was skulking in secret inside the palace like a cornered rat carried terrifying implications. This was a man who used to boast of his military triumphs whenever he subdued a measly orc tribe.
Right. Let's sell.
Steeling his resolve, Bingo decided to release his coins onto the market.
"I wish to sell at the current market price."
"Please sign this irrevocable sell order..."
"I'll sign. Hand it over."
With everyone warily watching each other, both buying and selling pressure had thinned to a crawl. Even so, the market should have had plenty of liquidity to absorb nine coins. Some might gawk at the sight of a commoner dumping nine Kodana, but Bingo judged it wouldn't be enough to sway the broader price.
Yet things did not unfold as he anticipated.
Even after his coins hit the order board, not a single soul lunged to snap them up. A palpable hesitation hung heavy in the air.
"Tsk. First Eric, and now his associate is dumping coins? Come to think of it, there's talk that the campaign in the Rancart Margraviate is going far worse than expected."
"The hound-kin and lizardmen joined forces, didn't they? That shouldn't be surprising."
"Normally, when one of the Four Heavenly Kings falls—especially the Beast King—their forces splinter into pieces..."
"Come now, the situation's different this time! The Demon King is bound to fall soon anyway, and after that, wouldn't an era come where every beastman is hunted down and slaughtered on sight? They're just thrashing about out of sheer terror. To us, they're all just mindless beasts regardless."
"Is that so...?"
The exchange, which had effortlessly swallowed the colossal holdings of Eric—one of the capital's foremost whales—was suddenly groaning under the weight of nine measly coins. Many of the nobles loitering around the hall stood with their arms crossed, adopting a wait-and-see stance. A few even shot pointed glares at the exchange clerks, silently demanding to know why the price wasn't adjusting downward when there were no buyers in sight.
This... is unnatural.
Keeping a safe distance from the highborn crowd, Bingo tilted his head. He wasn't in a panic just yet, but an unpleasant chill prickled the nape of his neck.
Fortunately, he was spared the indignity of having to revise his order downward. One of the onlookers seemed to muster his courage and pushed himself up. He was a collateral royal relative, roughly a sixth cousin to the Emperor.
"To hell with it. I'm getting in now."
"Oh, taking the plunge, My Lord?"
With generous bravado, the royal relative bought ten Kodana outright, sweeping up Bingo's entire order in the process. It was barely an hour before the closing bell.
A surge of profound loyalty to the Imperial House washed over Bingo. By all rights, he should have dropped to one knee and offered the deepest imperial salute, but he didn't have the peace of mind for pleasantries. The ominous murmurs he had overheard from the nobles had left an uneasy knot in his stomach.
If not for that gentleman...
He might very well have been forced to settle for three hundred and seventy, or even three hundred and sixty million apiece. It could have been nothing. It was only human nature to balk at a staggering price tag of three hundred and eighty million and hope for a correction of ten or twenty million. Yet perhaps because of what Eric had said, this whole atmosphere felt like the harbinger of a storm.
Fortunately, Bingo didn't have to dwell on it for long. Before he knew it, the funds had cleared.
After all deductions, the total came out to well over 3.3 billion lira. It was a fortune that would have taken hundreds of years to amass on a clerk's wage, even if he hadn't spent a single copper. This was hardly the time to fuss over vague, shapeless dread. Besides, even if catastrophe truly struck, it was no longer his disaster to bear. He had successfully realized his profits.
He would keep an eye on market trends, but from here on out, he intended to distance himself from it entirely.
Time to figure out how to spend it.
After depositing the draft into the Imperial Bank branch near the exchange, Bingo strode out, his feet practically floating on air. He resolved to move to the 3rd District where Eric lived the moment a good estate hit the market. He would buy a spacious house with a manicured garden and furnish it handsomely. Naturally, he would hire servants as well.
There was nothing stopping him. He was a rich man now.
After the exchange closed for the day. Inside the Imperial Palace.
"Whew... Eric, that useless piece of shit."
The Hero spat out curse after curse, struggling to quell his mounting irritation. It was true he had slipped up earlier. Eric was likely smarting from wounded pride after being cashiered from the Imperial Guard. Goading a guy like that about keeping his mouth shut was bound to rub him the wrong way, so his sudden petulance wasn't entirely surprising.
"Still, to kick away a golden chance to make a fortune? Stupidity has its limits."
"Hero. Strictly speaking, you weren't handing him a chance to make money—you were trying to shove him headfirst into a pit of fire. Choose your words carefully."
The Second Prince cut him off with a dry rebuke, unable to stomach the hypocrisy. Since the prince wasn't wrong, the Hero simply muttered a string of half-hearted assents.
"...In any case, my apologies, Your Highness." Reluctant though he was, the Hero bowed his head.
His original scheme had been to reel in both the leadership of the Holy Kingdom and Eric, saddling them with the Second Prince's Kodana hoard: a hundred and fifty coins to the Holy Kingdom and seventy to Eric. But with Eric pulling out, the neat little arrangement had completely unraveled.
What if the Holy Kingdom had balked, too?
They weren't the only suckers in the world, of course, but time was far too short to go hunting for new marks now. Had the Holy Kingdom refused as well, they would have had no choice but to dump everything onto the Kodana Exchange in a panicked rush. And with several sharp-eyed nobles already harboring suspicions over the military situation in the Rancart Margraviate, that would hardly have gone smoothly.
"Uh, Your Highness? If worst comes to worst, why not float a rumor that I'll be holding a grand departure ceremony for the front lines soon?"
It was a bargaining chip the Hero threw out, imagining he was making a grand concession. Yet curiously enough,
"No, that won't be necessary."
The Second Prince shook his head, showing not the slightest hint of distress. The Hero blinked, tilting his head in confusion. He couldn't believe this man—who had been harping on his throat just moments ago—was suddenly acting so magnanimous.
"Your Highness? What brought this on?"
"Unlike Eric, the Holy Kingdom complied without a fuss. I offloaded all hundred and fifty coins onto them. ...Of course, I had to grant a rather steep discount. Agreed to part with them at three hundred and ten million each. In exchange, I secured a sacred relic... the Holy Grail itself. Something His Imperial Majesty has long coveted."
The Holy Kingdom had already swallowed the bomb, and the payment had even cleared through the Imperial Bank. The single largest over-the-counter transaction in Kodana history had quietly drawn to a close.
"Well, that's a relief at least."
"They even subtly leaned on me, threatening to withdraw some of the paladins accompanying you if I didn't slash the price. I played along, pretending to haggle, and then conceded."
Only after hearing the prince's explanation did the Hero finally exhale a sigh of relief. To think they had handed over a sacred relic older than the Empire itself. And using the threat of withdrawing paladins who were already long dead to pressure an imperial prince—the irony was so absurd it didn't even warrant a scoff. Still, it had allowed the Second Prince to wash his hands of the mess.
"So you've recouped your principal, more or less. What about the rest of your holdings?"
"I'll dump them on the market tomorrow. There's no other choice."
"Phew. I just hope the market holds out until tomorrow."
The Hero and the Second Prince traded glances, smacking their lips in bitter distaste. Neither wore a cheerful expression. It wasn't simply that they had failed to pull off a flawless exit; an indescribable, suffocating unease weighed heavily upon their shoulders.
That evening, the Court Department—the administrative heart assisting the Emperor's rule—received an alarming dispatch from the Rancart Margraviate.
While knights from both the Imperial Guard and the Black Iron Knights were pressing an aggressive offensive to annihilate the beastman army, a single lizardman—his entire body covered in gruesome scars—had suddenly appeared. Alone, he had shattered the imperial encirclement and carved out an escape route for his brethren.
The beastmen had fled immediately afterward, rendering the clash a victory in the official records. Losses were steep, but the operation itself was technically a success.
Yet not a single soul smiled upon hearing the report.
For there was only one lizardman in the entire world capable of such monstrous martial prowess: the Beast King—the very creature the Hero had claimed to have slain only a short while ago. Unless the beast had risen as an undead horror, there remained only one possibility.
The Beast King was alive. And the Hero had fabricated his triumph.
It did not take long for that terrifying truth to sweep across the Empire.